A Closely Guarded Secret: When the Camels Go for a Walk

The three camels starring in a Christmas show Nativity scene, from left, are Ted, Gabby and Carol.Credit
Michael Appleton for The New York Times

Walking down 51st Street on Thursday morning, Brenda Clarke talked to herself out loud — just once — when she was halfway between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. “What, no camels today?” she said, pouting a bit.

Robert Monegan, standing on the street with his partner, Thaddeus Williams, spotted a kindred spirit.

The camels are in the cast of a Christmas show at a famous theater, and word has spread that they take morning constitutionals along 51st Street, though representatives of the theater seem to regard this pleasant fact as a national security secret.

Earlier in the week, a spokeswoman for the famous theater dug in when asked what time they might be out. “The problem,” she said, “is that I don’t know.”

Perhaps she could ask the camel people? “The problem is, we don’t give that information out,” she said, which is an altogether different problem.

“I’m not asking for Obama’s personal cellphone number,” I said, “just when camels are going to be on 51st Street.”

She resumed the infinite loop of not knowing or not telling.

A camel stakeout was set up before 7 a.m. Thursday. Workers at the theater said, variously, that the camels had already been out, weren’t coming at all, or would be emerging soon. They actually had no idea. Around 8:30, a janitor stepped outside, squinting at the press credential dangling from my neck.

“This is anonymous,” he said, “between you, me and the Lord.”

“O.K.”

“I like your hair,” he said.

Photo

The camels got some fresh air on West 51 Street on Thursday morning.Credit
Michael Appleton for The New York Times

“My head is holding a going-out-of-business sale on my hair,” I said.

“Don’t dye it,” he said, lifting a cap to show his own graying thatch. “Almost 99 percent of the people in New York color their hair. The dye goes into the brain, and then to the joints and makes people lame. Crippled old people walking with sticks, and a young head of hair!”

Yes. But the camels? His voice dropped. “They live in the theater and come out every morning. Remember: A-non-y-mous.”

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Then a stagehand, a member of a union that makes the knees of the toughest theater owners buckle, brushed past. Even he was nervous. “There’s a surveillance camera overhead, and you didn’t hear this from me,” he said, pretending to speak to a parking sign. “They’ll be out before 9:30.”

Carol, Ted and Gabby, three majestic creatures, paraded up a ramp from the theater to the street a few minutes after 9, escorted by Amanda Brook, her mother, Bambi Brook, and Todd Evans. All involved were most cordial. “We power walk them around the stage for an hour, then we bring them outside for light and air,” the younger Ms. Brook said.

As they stood in a kind of corral, being greeted by their public, it was evident that the camels were not spooked by cellphones. “What!” said Odile Doyet, visiting from France, as she opened her cellphone camera. “Amazing.”

Among dozens who had pictures taken with these apparitions were FedEx workers, a man in a hard hat, a traffic agent and a trumpet player in the theater orchestra.

Rescued after a breeder in Indiana fell ill, the camels live with the Brooks at the Sanctuary for Animals in Westtown, N.Y., and earn the upkeep for many other creatures who have no commercial, domestic or theatrical value. “Ted would be here every day, he loves the attention,” Ms. Brook said. Other camels will be driven down to give a break to Carol and Gabby.

“Understudies?” someone asks.

“We call them swings,” she said.

The camels perform at a climactic moment of the Christmas show, well after a routine by dancers famous for their synchronized high leg kicks. A living Nativity scene is staffed by the animal sanctuary with sheep, a donkey and the camels. “These three get along here, but they are not friends at home,” Ms. Brook added. “They have cliques at the farm.”

There was no spitting or bad manners, though Mr. Evans had to deploy an absorbent pad to keep the street from being flooded.

In years gone by, before they began indoor workouts, the camels walked the streets of Midtown for exercise, Ms. Brook’s mother said. Once, a neurosurgeon led a camel on a defiantly serene stroll.

“At the end,” she recalled, “He said, ‘Today, I am a wise man.’ ”

E-mail: dwyer@nytimes.com

Twitter: @jimdwyernyt

A version of this article appears in print on November 30, 2012, on Page A28 of the New York edition with the headline: A Closely Guarded Secret: When the Camels Go for a Walk. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe